Fyodor Ivanovich Burtsev

Fyodor Ivanovich Burtsev was born on 27 June 1923 in the village of Kazaki, now within the village of Gremyachee in Tula region. From 1932 he lived in Moscow. He completed the Lenin flying club in 1940, was called into the Red Army in January 1941 and that year graduated from the military aviation school for pilots at Borisoglebsk, where he then served as a flying instructor until 1942. In 1943 and 1944 he fought on the Bryansk, 1st Ukrainian and 3rd Belorussian Fronts. Over the war he flew 57 combat sorties on the La-5 and La-7 fighters, fought 17 air battles and shot down three enemy aircraft. Until 1948 he was a flying instructor at the Higher Officers' School of Air Combat at Lyubertsy, and in that post took part in testing the first Soviet jet fighters, the MiG-9 and the Yak-15. In 1950 he graduated from the test pilots' school, and until 1980 worked as a test pilot at the Flight Research Institute. He took part in testing the I-370, MiG-15, MiG-17, MiG-19, Ye-4, Ye-5, Ye-6 and MiG-21 fighters, the Tu-4LL and Tu-16LL flying laboratories, and the Il-18, Tu-104, Tu-124 and Yak-25. Together with Sultan Amet-Khan and Sergei Anokhin — both of whom are in this archive — he tested the analogue of the KS missile, for which he received the Stalin Prize, second class, in 1953. His Hero of the Soviet Union was conferred not for the war but for his test flying: by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of 22 July 1966, "for the courage and heroism shown in testing new aviation equipment", Colonel Burtsev was made a Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and Gold Star no. 11266. He was made a Distinguished Test Pilot of the USSR in 1964. From 1974 to 1988 Burtsev headed the test pilots' school. He retired in 1980. He lived in Zhukovsky and from 2001 in Moscow. He died on 4 May 2003 and is buried at Danilovskoye cemetery in Moscow.